walk back to the apartment office. Pushing the door open, I call out to the blonde still seated behind the desk.
“Would you call me a taxi, darlin’? I need to go into the city.”
“Sure, Mr. Falco. Will there be anything else?” she asks, batting those freaking baby blues. Unfortunately for her, they remind me of someone else.
“Yeah,” I say, flashing her a smile. “Can you show me to the laundry room?”
She grabs a set of keys off the desk and tucks her phone in her back pocket. “No problem. I just can’t be gone too long. I’m short-staffed today.”
The familiar rush heats my limbs as I follow her outside. “No worries,” I assure her, salivating as I take in her perfect, porcelain neck. “This won’t take long. I promise.”
One
Phoebe
I stand in the doorway, blinking into the morning sun and waving as the truck pulls away. “Thanks for nothing, assholes.”
We’ve subleased our home in the Hollywood Hills for only a week, and so far, the city hasn’t won any popularity contests with me. LAX lost my luggage, and the movers just now delivered the final four boxes. It seems they’d ended up on the wrong truck in Manhattan, and were headed to Boise.
Fucking Boise…
The idiots drop them in the foyer like a sack of bricks and take off. Apparently, they’re perfectly okay with a woman carrying a box of electronics up a flight of stairs.
Not like I’m almost seven months pregnant or anything.
Kicking a box down the hallway, I yelp as my sandal flies off, and my toe jams into the hard corner. “Shit!” I hold my stomach and give the box a hefty shove with my other, still-sandaled foot. The box flies across the hardwood and crashes into the wall, the contents rattling with the grim announcement I’d just destroyed Julian’s Xbox.
This week can go to hell.
Life was supposed to be a bouquet of tranquility once we moved to the West Coast. At least that’s what Julian promised when I agreed to leave the only life I’d called my own since escaping a nightmare.
Moving to New York City from North Carolina was supposed to be an exercise in self-sufficiency and mental stability. I never anticipated meeting and falling in love with a rock star.
In fact, I fought him every step of the way.
He led life in the spotlight for the world to pick apart. I had to hide in the shadows from a monster.
We both had our personal demons to fight. His demon stalked him relentlessly like a rabid fan. Unfortunately, my demon had been missing for three years and could pop up at any second.
However, Julian Bale wore me down. To force my hand, he’d made his manager pull strings to make me his biographer.
Then he made me love him.
As if our lives weren’t scripted for a soap opera enough, in the middle of a stalker and an on-again, off-again relationship, I got pregnant. Julian said it was because we were meant to be. I still blame faulty pill packaging.
After his stalker attacked us, the publicity did two things simultaneously: it made Julian a household name, and it brought my monster out of hiding.
Julian’s band, Lords of Lyre, had been contemplating a move to Los Angeles before he met me. After sales skyrocketed, it was inevitable. Julian rationalized that moving across the country would keep me safe.
Moving to Antarctica wouldn’t keep me safe.
Picking up a box marked kitchen, I pad across the floor when a TV broadcast draws my attention. With Julian away on press tours, the background noise has become my only companion. Normally, I don’t care for the news, but a caption catches my eye, and I grab the remote off the back of the couch, turning up the volume.
My chest constricts as the pretty blonde anchor reads the story with a sorrowful expression.
“Los Angeles County Police found the body of a woman in Griffith Park early this morning. Ride operators on the iconic Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round called 9-1-1 dispatchers after they discovered her when opening the popular attraction. While official reports haven’t been released, it has been confirmed that the woman’s death appears to be a homicide, the body dumped postmortem. The official cause of death, according to lead detective Alex Carmichael, was a series of seven stab wounds to her abdomen. The victim has been identified as twenty-year-old Elisabeth Cayden, assistant manager at Hill Heights Apartments in the Hollywood Hills.”
Abdominal stab wounds.
I run my fingertips over my protruding belly. The puckered, scarred skin is becoming